


7 Shots

by KC_Polar_Bear



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:40:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25437838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KC_Polar_Bear/pseuds/KC_Polar_Bear
Summary: If any shit went down right now, Clayton was painfully aware that they were potentially outnumbered 2 to 1.Needless to say, he didn’t fucking like it.---------------------------The UnDeadwood 5 start and finish a gunfight while firing only seven shots.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	7 Shots

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song “7 Shots” by Volbeat. Recommended listening while you read.

_One_

Clayton Sharpe drummed his fingers on the smooth wood surface of the table. The air in the saloon had grown steadily more tense over the last few minutes as the conversation between his party and the four men sitting across from them had gradually begun to devolve; he’d stopped paying attention to specific words a long time ago, choosing instead to let Matthew and Miriam play politics while he glanced furtively around the room, mentally clocking exits and counting anyone who was paying them undue attention. His right hand had already begun to curl loosely around the butt of the pistol in the holster at his hip, his feet beginning to brace against the floor in case he had to jump out of his chair.

The room they were sitting in looked like most of the saloons Clayton had visited before – sometimes he thought there was a fuckin’ catalogue these things came in or something. The swinging front doors opened into a single wide-open room with tables scattered around it and a bar along the back wall. Staircases ran up the walls on either side, corridors disappearing into the second floor on either side of a balcony that ran across above the bar with a few more tables on it. Their meeting was too big for a single table, so two had been shoved together to accommodate them. The five of them sat on one side with Clayton on the end; Matthew and then Arabella sat to his left and Aly and then Miriam to his right, and the four men they’d been there to meet sat around the other end. Several other men sat at some of the other tables; Clayton counted three more on their level and another pair on the balcony.

And that still didn’t include the imposing, rough-looking Nordic woman who had been standing behind the bar wiping down a shotgun since they’d walked in. If any shit went down right now, Clayton was painfully aware that they were potentially outnumbered 2 to 1.

Needless to say, he didn’t fucking like it.

Clayton tuned back in to the conversation at the same moment he subtly tightened his grip on the butt of his gun; one of the big fucks at the other end of the table had just finished saying some slimy shit to one of the women in their party. He didn’t catch the words but he could hear the sneer in the beefy man’s voice as he threw a shit-eating grin at Miriam. He felt his upper lip begin to curl back into a snarl just as Matthew spoke up, his rumbling baritone just as maddeningly deep and steady as ever.

“Now look here, son,” he said, one hand raised toward the asshole who’d just spoken, fingers splayed in a gesture that would look placating to anyone who didn’t look past the collar. “We came to your fine establishment this evening in good faith and made you an offer that was more than generous. I would recommend –“ One of the other men at the far end of the table, a middle-aged man with stringy, shoulder-length hair and a bushy mustache, started to interrupt and Matthew _turned_ on him, in a way Clayton would never have expected from him six months ago, bringing his fingers together and jabbing at him with his hand turned sideways like the blade of a knife. “… _I would recommend_ ,” he repeated, not raising his voice but practically growling at the poor idiot instead. “That you think very hard before you let your mouth run away from you again. Believe me when I tell you, you will not enjoy what happens when these people’s patience runs out.”

As Matthew spoke, Clayton glanced away to avoid cracking a smile and caught a glimpse of Arabella staring intently at the surface of the table, eyes half closed, mouthing what looked like an entire one-sided conversation. There was the tiniest glint of light, like the sun catching on someone’s belt buckle, and he craned his neck the slightest bit to see her deftly slip what looked like a playing card into Matthew’s jacket pocket. He thought he could see what looked like small sparks of electricity jumping off of her hand and the card, and then Matthew’s pupils dilated and the corners of his mouth twitched up, and Clayton knew exactly what had just happened.

_Huh. Well, fuck me running_ , he thought, leaning back in his chair. _So that’s what that shit looks like from the other end._

There was a snort of laughter from the other end of the table and his head snapped back up. Another of the men sitting opposite them, this one a portly bastard with a few thin wisps of hair combed futilely across his pink, nearly bald scalp, was grinning condescendingly at Matthew, dabbing at the sweat on his forehead with a grimy handkerchief. “Why Reverend,” he said, his voice coated with sickly sweet fake civility like too thick a coat of paint. “If I didn’t know any better I would swear you were threatening us in our own business.” His grin widened, thin lips peeling away from rotting teeth. “And after we were kind enough to invite you in.”

Clayton’s blood was already boiling, but whatever Arabella had done, Matthew was completely unfazed. His pupils flicked to the fat man and he brought his hand back to his chest, gesturing at himself, his eyes narrowing, his mouth sliding up into an almost lazy half smile. “Son, if I sound threatening, it’s only because I have such a deep concern for the safety of everyone present here. I would hate to see this meeting between civilized people be derailed by any sort of… _unpleasantness_.”

Clayton nudged Aly’s leg with his foot. Aly turned to meet his eye and he shook his head slowly, flicking his eyes toward the other end of the table. Aly nodded curtly, turned away from Clayton and moved one hand along the edge of the table until it rested gently on top of Miriam’s; the other hand drifted slowly down to his side, where his rifle rested against his thigh like a crutch.

The fat man was speaking again, the dumb fucker not having the basic sense to back away from a coiled viper. “Much obliged, Reverend,” he said, the last word sliding off his thick tongue like a wad of mucus. “But I don’t think we’re the ones who need to be concerned about unpleasantness.” As Clayton watched, he tapped two fingers against the table and the fourth man, sitting immediately to his left, began to slide his hand under his jacket, his eyes fixed on Matthew.

Clayton shot him in the balls under the table before he could move, and then all hell broke loose.

_Two_

Just like in most of the other gunfights Clayton had found himself wrapped up in, a lot of things happened all at once. The poor fucker he had shot went tumbling over backwards in his chair, shrieking in agony, a spurt of blood splashing across the face of the fat man sitting beside him. He and the other two men at that end recoiled from the table, chair legs scraping loudly over the wooden floor as they shoved themselves away from their wounded comrade.

Clayton’s four companions took advantage of the moment of surprise, moving in almost unnatural synchronization. Matthew and Arabella immediately flipped their end of the table away from them, knocking it onto its side; Aly and Miriam threw themselves backwards, letting the table topple over in front of them. Miriam dug her heels into the floor, letting her chair fall away behind her, and catapulted herself out of it, dropping to one knee behind their new makeshift cover. Clayton felt the table leg whip past his still outstretched gun hand; the second he was clear, he leapt to his feet, whipped to his right and swung the gun around, curling his arm just enough to miss Matthew by a hair’s width, and fanned another shot toward the woman behind the bar, who had already begun to raise her shotgun toward them. His shot struck her just below her right eye, blowing out a sizeable chunk of the back of her head and spraying an eruption of blood, bone and brain matter onto the shelves behind her.

There was a clattering sound as the shotgun she’d been holding dropped to the floor; the body rocked backward, bouncing off the back wall and then slumping forward out of sight. Clayton elbowed his chair away and went to pivot around for another shot, but a heavy hand gripped his shoulder and practically threw him to the floor, dropping him beside Miriam next to the table.

“Damn it, Clay, get down!” Matthew shouted gruffly, and Clayton had just enough presence of mind to notice something different about his voice, as though it were amplified or echoing or…wait.

_Christ, Bella, the fuck did you do to him?_

As he pressed his hands against the ground, readying his gun again, Clayton could’ve sworn he heard Matthew speaking in two slightly different voices at once.

_Three_

Aly had thrown himself backwards from the table at the same instant Miriam had; as Clayton turned to fire again, he felt his chair beginning to fall backwards. He gripped his rifle in both hands and slammed it into the floor, bouncing him back upright. His momentum threw him forward out of his chair and he shot to his feet, bringing the rifle up to his shoulder and taking careful aim at one of the two men on the balcony over the bar, both of whom had come to the railing and drawn weapons of their own.

He didn’t need more than half a second to bring the gun up to his shoulder and fire at the man on the right. The bullet hit him in the throat and staggered him back from the railing, the slug passing smoothly through and out the other side before embedding itself in the wall behind him. The man toppled to the floor, a wet gurgling sound escaping his mouth as he tried to breathe through his own blood. Aly barely stopped moving, darting forward and twisting his body around, landing on his ass beside the table with his back up against the surface. He glanced at Miriam beside him, who was in the process of cocking back the hammer on her own pistol, a small snuff box already sitting on the ground beside her.

“So much for the fuckin’ diplomatic approach,” he muttered, smacking the butt of his rifle against the heel of one hand to keep it from jamming. Miriam spared him a moment’s look before steadying her gun hand with the other and bracing herself against the table.

“Mr. Fogg, you’ve picked one hell of a goddamn time to say ‘I told you so,’” she muttered back. “Just shut up and get that box open.”

_Four/Five_

From where he knelt behind the table, Clayton watched as Matthew spun away from where he’d been standing, moving with an agility that belied his size, an efficiency to his movements that Clayton had never seen before. In one smooth motion, he reached behind him, pulled his shotgun out of the strap across his back and spun it up to his shoulder.

Matthew pulled one of the triggers just as one of the other three men from the far side of the room stepped up and drew a rifle from under his table. The entire saloon was filled with a deafening boom as the buckshot exploded out of the barrel, blasting a crater into his chest. Shreds of fabric, flesh, blood and bone erupted into the air as the man was blasted back off his feet, bouncing over the table and knocking into the man who’d been sitting across from him, both of them collapsing onto the floor.

Less than a second later, the third man from that side of the room pulled what looked like a handful of knives out of his jacket pocket. He tossed one up into the air, caught it by the blade and hurled it at Matthew, flicking his wrist to send it spinning end over end as it flew toward him.

Before Clayton could even shout a warning, he saw a series of small electric sparks, like the ones he’d seen coming off of Arabella’s hand and the card, dance across Matthew’s shoulders and up the back of his neck. With lightning speed and expert precision, Matthew swung the gun around upside down, catching the blade of the knife in the butt of the shotgun an inch in front of his face.

At that exact instant, there was a series of heavy footfalls along the wood floor of the saloon as one of the men from their table dodged around Arabella and bum-rushed Matthew, lowering his shoulder like he meant to tackle him. There was another small burst of sparks and then, in a single fluid motion, Matthew stuck one foot out behind him, executed a crisp, almost military about-face, dropped to a knee, swung the gun back up to his shoulder and fired the second barrel point blank into the man’s face.

The force of the blast at that proximity was so intense that it blew the man’s head almost completely off his shoulders. Pieces of bloody skin and bone splattered the wall, ceiling and floor behind the man, whose corpse barreled into Matthew, knocking him back onto his ass; instead of just getting knocked down, though, Matthew went with the momentum and rolled backwards, kicking the now headless corpse back over his head toward the other tables and somersaulting to his feet. He crouched beneath one of the tables, tugging the knife free of the shotgun and readying it for another attack.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Matt!” Clayton said with a laugh of disbelief. “When the fuck did you learn how to do that?”

Matthew didn’t even look at him, just set the shotgun aside and muttered, “Gunfight ain’t no excuse to blaspheme, Clay.”

_Six_

Arabella hadn’t hesitated for a second – once she’d flipped the table away, both her hands were moving, one reaching down for the gun strapped to her leg, the other absently tracing complicated symbols in the air. She spun to her right, and without so much as a glance his way, brought the gun up and squeezed off a shot at the second man on the balcony. The bullet entered his chest just to the right of his sternum, sliding between two of his ribs and puncturing his lung. He stumbled backward, tripped over his own feet and toppled over onto the floor, his head bouncing hard off the corner of a table.

Arabella pivoted on her toes, swung her left hand up and flicked her wrist; a playing card seemed to slide into her hand from out of thin air, and she flung it out of her hand and into the two men on the other side of the saloon, one of whom was helping the other to his feet. There was a flash of brilliant, blinding white light, and the two men started to…the only word she could think of to describe it was melt, their skin turning almost into liquid and sloughing off their bones. They only had a moment to scream, and scream they did, but the noise cut out just as fast as it began and they were just two piles of bones coated in goopy, congealing flesh juice.

She stumbled forward, suddenly struggling to breathe, her vision going spotty as a wave of dizziness plowed into her like a charging horse. She barely heard Aly shout, “Fire in the hole!” before she fell onto her hands and knees and vomited onto the floor.

_Seven_

Miriam had just been waiting for Arabella to turn away. The second she was clear, she shoved the snuff box at Aly, tightened her grip on her pistol, and whispered, “Now!”

On her signal, Aly pulled a glass vial roughly the size of a shoe from the snuff box, hefted it in his hand, and leveraged himself onto the balls of his feet. “Fire in the hole!” He shouted, and threw the vial at the two remaining men from their table that still stood in the corner, the fat man cowering behind the one with the big mustache who was only just now readying his gun to fire.

Miriam brought her pistol up and fired a single shot; her bullet struck the vial in midair just as it reached the two men and shattered it, the unstable contents immediately igniting and covering their last two foes in a thick blanket of flames. The two men threw themselves onto the floor, thrashing and screaming desperately as they tried to extinguish the fire.

“Anybody hurt?” She called out as the screams died away and the room fell silent again. She slowly lowered her pistol and slid back down against the table.

“’M good,” Clayton said from just beyond Aly. She saw him rise to his feet out of the corner of her eye, still glancing anxiously around the room as though expecting reinforcements.

“I’m all right, too, thank God,” Matthew said from a little further away, his voice a little shaky. “Little bit dizzy, but I don’t think that’s from the fight.” Before she could ask what that meant, Matthew spoke again. “Bella, what _was_ that?”

There was no reply from Arabella. Miriam rose to her feet and saw her, just on the other side of the table, on her hands and knees on the floor, gasping for air. “Goddammit, she tried to cast two spells at once again, didn’t she?” Aly said from beside her. He set his rifle on the floor and stepped quickly past Clayton and around the table to kneel by Arabella’s side. “At least tell me you didn’t use a fuckin’ joker this time.”

Arabella nodded weakly, and Miriam started to sigh with relief when she heard a ragged, terrified whimper from behind her. She turned over her shoulder to find the first man Clayton had shot that started all this, one hand gripping the mess of ruined flesh that had once been his genitals, the other being used to crawl away, his feet scrabbling along the floor, leaving a trail of blood behind him as he went.

Miriam slid her gun back into the holster she wore strapped to her thigh and stepped slowly toward the injured man, fixing her eyes on his. His face paled even further than it already had, and his movements became more spasmodic and desperate.

“Please,” he choked out, a small trail of blood leaking out from the corner of his mouth. “Don’t let him shoot me again.”

“Oh, sugar,” she whispered, her voice dripping with condescension and pity. “He’s not the one you ought to be worried about.” As she spoke, her eyes began to cloud over until they were completely filled with a deep, hollow black that seemed to stretch into infinity. The man in front of her sucked in a terrified gasp of air and began frantically clawing at the floor, trying futilely to put distance between them.

“Oh god,” he said weakly, staring at her face. She lifted one hand as wisps of thick, black smoke began to pour out of her skin, curling around and around her forearm up to the elbow.

“Far from, I’m afraid,” she said, almost sadly, and thrust her hand out toward him. The smoke erupted from her hand with force now, billowing out and enveloping his body within the span of a few seconds. He screamed, once, but just once, and it didn’t last very long. After a moment the smoke cleared and the man lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, the skin sucked tight against his bones like an emaciated prisoner, his eyes bulging, his tongue lolling limply out of his slack jaw. The smoke retreated back into Miriam’s hand, and she turned back toward her companions to find Clayton and Matthew standing right in front of her.

“Did you, uh…” Matthew stopped, swallowed, and seemed to steel himself. “Did you get what you needed, Miss Miriam?”

“I did indeed, Reverend, thank you,” she said, her eyes returning to normal. “This spell is very close to being paid off, I can feel it.”

He nodded rapidly, one hand already pulling the rosary from his pocket. “That’s very good to hear. I’d hate to think that you were stuck with this awful burden forever because of me.”

“I would do it again in a second, Matthew,” she said softly, placing a hand on his thick upper arm as if to show him that the contact wouldn’t burn either of them. “Like you would’ve done for any one of us.”

He drew in a deep, shuddering breath and was about to answer when Clayton broke in. “It’s probably for the best, anyway,” he said, staring down at the dead man with his hands in his pockets. “Somebody shot my dick off I’d want them to kill me, too.” He got an exasperated look from Matthew, a sigh from Miriam and muffled laughter from Aly across the room.

“Come on,” he said, striding toward the front doors. “We’re done. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

**Author's Note:**

> I love this premise because it has so much potential for possible encounters. If this gets enough attention, I’ll definitely look into writing more gunfights. 
> 
> Also, I have taken extensive creative liberties with how spells work in this universe. Whatever, it’s fine.


End file.
